Scottish rescue group adds DJI FPV drone to its search tools

The use of first-person view (FPV) drones has been described as an exciting new prospect that all UAV pilots should experience, as well as being an essential tool for many professional filmmakers.

Now the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team is finding another use for their new drone, the DJI Avata: Rescuing lost or otherwise missing people in Scotland's vast wilderness.

Search and rescue organizations in Scotland are using drones to locate people who have wandered away or become stranded in the country's beautiful, but often treacherous, Highland terrain.

Now the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team is putting a different spin on aerial help by providing stray hikers with the deployment of its new DJI Avata FPV aircraft, which can take its pilots into the nooks and crannies of surveyed areas.

Covering the south west region of Scotland since its founding in 1975, the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team added drones to its toolkit a few years ago. Now it is expanding this again with the close-in FPV aspect and high maneuverability that its DJI Avata drone will provide, demonstrating and extending the organisation's range of search and rescue operations.

The unit is clearly keen to get to work with the new addition, held back only by – in what will be something less than a shock to anyone who has visited the otherwise wonderful nation – the poor conditions that have engulfed Scotland in recent times .

“The respite from the recent weather has allowed the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team to test our new DJI Avata drone which was delivered by the Edinburgh drone company on Christmas Eve,” reports the public service group. “We hope to use it in more complex searches: water/rope rescue, gullies and difficult to access areas.”

The new “and there you are” FPV drone will be used in the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team's regular work to rescue errant walkers in the Dumfries, Galloway and South Ayrshire regions of Scotland. But as a watchdog member of the nation's Search & Rescue Aerial Association (SARAA), it will also deploy the new DJI Avata wherever missing-person alerts are issued in the nation's wilderness.

“The team is going from strength to strength and we are now flying four drones, with nine qualified pilots across the country,” said the Galloway Mountain Rescue Team as they announced the first DJI Avata flights and their planned FPV contributions to the search for lost hikers. “All of our pilots are long-standing members of the Scottish Mountain Rescue teams and SARAA hopes to continue to develop this new and existing resource within Scottish Mountain Rescue.”